September 17, 2005
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In keeping with the Featured Grownups “Change” topic, I am posting two poems which I have previously posted when they were written. These are incredibly personal poems which deal with my father’s and mother’s deaths. I hadn’t written a lot of poetry concerning my mother’s death in such detail as I do in the second poem here, “No Stroke of Luck”, until I wrote it earlier this year. The largest “change” in my life occured in the early 70s, as I entered my third decade on the planet. Dad died at 54 when I was 21, and Mom passed away a couple of years later. MFN
“Summer’s End: A Freeform Elegy”
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
Saturday, August 14th, 2004 : 9:53 a.m. pdt
A World’s Fair in Vancouver, the destination
Out from four years hellish study and no degree
A vacation with four friends, pile in the car
Forget the petulant bookish atmosphere
Rent in twain by Mother’s lapse into rigidity
And Father’s nightly cries to heaven
Forget these stifled cries, as young manhood
Surges forward, get in the car,
Forget forget forget but don’t forget
To give out the phone numbers
For the campgrounds along the way
In case of emergency break free of fear
And answer the phone.
Tents and cookouts, sunset dinners
In the shadow of Hearst’s castle
Watching skittering squirrels run along the sand
Forget the pains of suffering youth
And the shards of agony suffered by my parents
As the great journey begins for life
A life with common bonds of friendship
Free from the common bonds of wretchedness
Born by my immediate progenitors
Forget pain for happiness,
And don’t forget to give out the phone numbers
And don’t forget to be available,
If circumstance holds true to terrible form
Photographs of Golden Gates, with buddies
Arms encircled round fellowship’s experience
A long drive into the hilly terrain
To the evening’s natural campground
Where, irrespective of common colds received,
A bounteous dinner of fried fish awaits
Forget the malificent forebodings from home,
And relish Nature’s permanence in the mountains
Chilly, hilly, bright fire crackles
Spewing embers heavenward, as the crumpled piece
of paper with the phone number is straightened
Miles away, and the number dialed.
An early evening into the tent, as the common cold
Obstructs enjoyment further of the evening’s delights.
But the phone rings in the Parks Office
At the foot of the hill, and the Ranger pilots his jeep
Up to the camp, which is settling for the night.
One of the four lifts the flap to my tent, and calls
The phone has rung, and my brother and sister need me.
Mother has been hospitalized for what seems like years,
Although it has only been three, the same three in which
College studies seemed so banal and so dictatorial,
The same three in which Father has succumbed to two more
Heart attacks to add to his list.
Mother has been at Death’s door, and the phone numbers
Have been left in case she passes
while the vacation is in progress.
Like the boy scout, I am properly prepared,
And face the inevitable as the buddies drive
Toward the Ranger’s shack at the foot of the hill.
Vancouver suddenly seems far away,
A playgound for more stable times,
For frivolous and felicitous fancy, far away
Far away.
Far from any enlightened bright and cheerful time,
A phone booth from hell opens it’s maw to engulf me.
The four nervously pace around the booth, as I dial home.
My brother is sudden and still, breathing the words
Sickeningly subtle, and sorrowfully poignant,
“Father is Dead”
Not Mother, for whom we have planned
So precisely, but the other parent, for whom life
Has played it’s last dirty trick.
Father, who prayed to the Almighty each night, that
Mother’s paralysis would end, and peace be restored.
Father, the rock, impervious to life’s shackled
Resistance, calmly evincing life’s purposefulness
And now robbed of it, by another of his
Heart’s attacks.
Father, for whom I never thought Death would call
Is lying on his back in the Mortuary,
And Brother calls me back home to the House of Pain.
The buddies pitch in to purchase the plane fare,
“I’ve never flown in a plane before”, I mutter,
Another exciting life experience awaits,
But thoughts are not in the fuselage or on the wing,
But miles South on a slab in Whittier,
With his eyes closed forever.
And Mother, does she know, Does she grieve
Behind her lifeless rigidity, and calm
But tear stained countenance, is she pained?
The flight rends me from my bucolic reverie
Quickly depositing me back firmly
In the House of Pain, where Brother and Sister
Calmly, solidly, stoically, shake my hand
Vancouver fades fast away,
And plans have to be made, and a trip to Mother’s side
And all semblance of familial permanence fades as well
Into the misty mordant memories of youth and value.
The Summer of 1974 wore long and greivous, unsettling,
Starting with a joyous rapture, and ending with
The shearing of familial peace and good will.
Mother’s eyes glassy with hurt and questioning,
She died that day during the visit for me,
And like a spectre, I saw the life drain from those eyes,
Green glassy mirrors no longer reflecting my soul
Death came twice and I left forever
The sting of perdurable ecstasy unravelled
The unbid promise of Summer’s unreadable memories
Lost in the occurrences of time’s plodding callowness
Staining the soft white of existential illusion
Death claimed one in purpose, and another in perception
No more would vibrant vacation volley toward exhilaration
In my malleable mind, as I grieve.
But Summers end eventually, followed fast by the Fall,
And Winter’s discontent and folly’s vehicle,
Driving us into the insanity of purposeless abandon.
Empty nights faded into fickle mornings,
And in no time at all, Mother passed, as did the summer,
Into oblivion, with a marker at her head, next to her husband.
Together in peace, away from all worry,
Peace and quiet at last
I hardly ever think of Vancouver, and the Fair,
In lasting agony, I grieve for Parents buried where
In banks of hilly terrain, neath willows weeping
So sad and sorrowed tears beneath my eyelids seeping
Life is sudden, filled with joys and sorrows send
Seasons pass, with poignant dreams of Summer’s end.
“No Stroke of Luck”
Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri
March 9, 2005 4:02 p.m. pst
I
She wanted to “escape the Mexicans”
No matter that Los Angeles was part of Mexico once
No matter that most of the street signs were in Spanish
As was the name of the town
No matter that my siblings and I had made many friends
(and a lot of Mexican descent) and really didn’t want to leave home
No matter
Dad deferred to Mom’s rants and uneasy nervousness
Dad dialed the number of the real estate agent
Dad secured a place in Glendora, far from “the Mexicans”
And though the family felt ripped from existence in El Monte
Torn from friendships and high school shenanigans
I didn’t mind too much, as I graduated that year,
And college life loomed fifty miles away the next semester.
Sis and bro took it all badly, and emotions erupted
Escalating erratic behaviors
Eviscerating complacent dreamscapes
And planting the family in unforseen circumstance
The nightly dinners grew upsetting,
But Dad deferred to Mom’s state of paranoia after all
Sis and bro became rebels
And I didn’t pay too much attention to it all
When confronted with the brick walls of academe
Which collected my attention spanning the new decade
Mom was growing more agitated
I’m sure Dad and my siblings noticed more than I
And I, her “little genius” and most beloved
grew farther from her, and this probably
added to her insumountable troubling episodes
But I hardly noticed
Preferring to spend time at the library
between school classes and worktime hours
I would get home late at night,
open my own door with my own key,
and slip inside my own “apartment” within our home
I would get up early and bathe,
then climb in the car for the fifty mile drive to school
before eight in the morning when class started.
I didn’t see a lot of the buildup
I didn’t pay attention to the wrenching dissimilarity
of Mother’s actions.
The slow nervous laughter of unforseen calamity
didn’t pierce through my hedonistic armor
The fast sure slipping into manic obsession
didn’t register with me, but it did with my family
Quarrels seemed to grow in number and intensity
I would quarrel with my siblings,
gaining chokeholds on bro in the kitchen
I would quarrel with my Mother,
Even as her nervous calamity grew larger
as a black cloud of coincidental animosity
And the night before she was struck down
Was one of the nastiest quarrels in our household
II
That Christmas was the last of feigned happy times
opening presents which presented a modicum of laughter
and less tears than usual
But come the spring, the evil sprung up again,
Sis and bro were finally getting settled
And high school daze descended upon them in Glendora.
They were children, really, and the pleasant auras of
new friendships and undiscovered lands
occupied their misery and supplanted it entirely
Like any older brother, I would greet their new friends,
And make friends of my own, including sis’s best friend
who became one of my girlfriends.
The night of long knives in our household
followed a trip to the medical center the day before
I had driven Mom in for a checkup
because she “didn’t feel right”
After all, she seldom “felt right” in those last days
leading to the stroke
The doctor (after an interminable wait) gave her a
clean bill of health
“nervous problems”
take two of these and call me in the morning
I can’t remember the subject of the quarrel
Only that there was one, pitting Mom against me
And at 19 I felt I should finally “get my say”
After all I didn’t need to be in the (new) family home
I could be in a dorm at SC with my friends.
I certainly didnt’ need the fifty mile drive.
I felt we shouldn’t have moved anyway
Just like everybody else (except Mom)
I went to bed crying, and so did Mom,
but we didn’t “make up”
the stroke hit her the next morning,
and Dad didn’t go into work, but took her to the hospital,
which in essence she never left for another four years.
III
I found out when I got home from school in the evening
We visited Mom in her room at Kaiser Permanente
Slick floors and the ever present alcohol smell
White robes and IV tubes
the first stroke was not bilateral
Only one side of her body was rigid
Memory has clouded and I don’t know if she could speak
that first night
but in time she grew stronger, and she did come home
for about a week sometime later
until the bilateral stroke finished her sentence
IV
Time has not been kind to a memory I forgot years ago
The particulars of bad news tend to filter fast
as sands hurtling through an hourglass with a
foot wide opening
Days fade to weeks fade to months
This was no stroke of luck,
And it ended quick her pluck,
Mom’s body took it’s toll, and the fee was very great
With a bilateral, all muscles freeze
There is no speech, nor would it seem recognition
Nor did she appear as Mom to me anymore
The family put up great facades for the nightly trips
which seem to have lasted for years, but there were only two
From nightly, to weekly, for sis, bro, and me
But Dad kept the vigil, relating to unheard ears
the events of the day.
Nothing was normal, my grades began to suffer
Dad kept having more of his heart attacks
as the pressure burdened him so
Mom was relegated from hospital to nursing home
Money fled the bank accounts, both hers and Dad’s
The smell always overwhelmed me during the visits
And I can’t say I looked forward to them at all
They were a hindrance in an otherwise full life at school
And with friends, discovering booze, dope, rock and roll and
sometime romance, the “other life” rarely made an appearance
Two years of visits, and I needed a vacation
A vacation from everything.
Young people are filled with angst and ennui as a rule anyway
And my situation seemed to fill me with insufferable agony
So I left for a vacation in the Summer of 74
And Dad, who never stopped his nightly trips
Had his 13th and last heart attack when I was
somewhere north of Frisco camping out.
V
Mom of course couldn’t attend the funeral,
as she was hooked up to a dialysis machine
The day was overcast even though it was the middle of summer
when I, my sis, and my bro trekked to the nursing home
to tell Mother the grief stricken news
She couldn’t cry, but she did
And something within me snapped shut,
I made a terrible decision that day,
One which I regret to this day,
In fact, the only regret I harbor after living
over a half century is this one.
I never visited Mom again after that
She lost not only her husband but her oldest son
I felt as if she had been gone for two years,
And for me, cutting the umbilical held finality
Her eyes looked like dark marbles
Her sweet dispostion had quietly melted
somewhere between El Monte and Glendora
She was a cipher, a cardboard facsimile
She was not my Mother
And I left that afternoon never to return
VI
I have called myself a poet,
But poetry seldom tells the truth when the truth
Cuts as deeply as this does now pondering the outcome
I am sure as salvation that I have been forgiven
By sweet Mother’s soul
I am positive that I have nothing to worry about in perpetuity
That I have not become an evil being because of my youthful
naivete.
Two more years and she finally passed away, softly, and with no troubles
Her death certificate reads heart failure
Her broken heart stopped beating at last.
I didnt’ attend her funeral
To me she was already dead
VII
Poetry spoke to me in the years following at times
Yeilding petty purpose when confronted with the ills
of my behaviors
My suicidal urges at once escalated, and thanks to
good friends, and counseling, and prayers to Jesus
in time I was able to come to grips with the situation.
In time my sis, my bro and I got back together,
but only for a little while, before the family completely
rent itself out of existence.
I gave my sister away at her wedding.
I made love to my brother’s female friend
We split the furniture in the house three ways
(I had to sell the house following my Father’s death when
I was made executor of Mother’s estate at age 20
so Mom could gain Medicare benefits to pay
for her stay in the nursing home,
which cost almost ten grand a month if memory serves.)
Of course in time everything heals, including bad memories
And I forgot Mother’s face and Father’s care.
I slipped deeper into an alcohol and drug fueled abandonment
which didn’t straighten out until well into the next decade.
The decades passed,
And here I am, still here, still writing, still upset
But no matter what ever happens
I cannot turn back the hands of time,
And I cannot apologize for my inept decisions
All I can say is I’m sorry, Mother, for escaping you
As you tried to escape those “Mexicans” in El Monte
You were my rock for many years, and when you
started to crumble, I just couldn’t take it,
And I fled
I’ve been fleeing ever since
I know I can never go back home
because it doesn’t exist
And will never exist anymore
sorrow seldom soothes the savage hurt
I cry with dry eyes
and lift my voice to you in Heaven
Where absolution sighs
And let this be an altar to my ineptitude
thirty years later.
Comments (23)
I am posting your link and will return to read soon. Thanks!
:heartbeat::heartbeat::heartbeat::heartbeat::heartbeat::heartbeat::heartbeat:
:heartbeat:
Such pain… my heart goes out to you, Mike. :heartbeat:
~Suzanne
Brilliant writing, Mike! I have been a little down lately, and after reading your entries, I am in tears. It is so heartbreaking to lose loved ones, especially when they are alive, but not able to actually live life. I don’t know how you dealt with everything … I just can’t imagine what you went through, but somehow I believe it made you a stronger and more compassionate person. Enjoy your day!:goodjob:
Wonderful poems, Mike, really beautiful. Feigned happy times…you remind me of that last Thanksgiving dinner with my mom, with my brothers and I acting out the parts of loving siblings, wanting (at least on my part) to give her one last happy memory. As so often, thanks, Mike, for making me think.
Sandy
very moving, it brought some memories of my family. Today must be the day where everyone writes about regrets, and how they wish they could go back. The question is, would you ever change what you did? What you did over 30 years ago could be the thing that made you who you are today and if you did go back and do something different, what would your life be like now? Would it be any different? Those are the questions that people need to think about before they wish they could go back in time. Great Poems. Peace Out and Take Care.:wave:
Autumn
awesome writing.
Dearest Mike,
The loss of parents is a very life changing situation, wether we love or hate them. It is hard to accept that those parental figures, who as children we see as superheros … display their humanity as we grow. These poems you have here are touching, and do well to remind us all to appreciate each and every moment of our lives with others.
Hugs & Kisses,
Liz wink
Mike, There is a word that to me has more weight then most…tragedy….and it has import because it denotes a loss that isn’t within the normal scope ..and /or a loss that is so searing as to leave an imprint that never fades….Most of us lose our parents at some point ,but most do not expereince this loss so early in life..there is so much you missed including the opportunity to mend fences etc …I respect that you are able to write about such a hurt,,I was moved by your poems..thanks forsharing them…
Whew!! I think I wore OUT my right index finger, from so much scrolling! I agree, there are a lot of definitions on ‘change.’ I loved this challenge, and hope the next will be just as interesting. Appreciate your comment!
You are the proud recipient of a commemorative Harry Pothead E-Prop Prop-Marker.
You are receiving this because Anatole is either a) abducted by space aliens, b) drunk from vodka, or c) about to go to bed and get some much needed rest.
Have no fear, Anatole will return with both a wonderful and insightful commentary on your blog entry, AND FREE DRUGS!
In the meantime, be well.
Dearest Mike,
Thinking and dreaming of you … :love:
Love,
Liz
Och! I must return here soon. Poetry is divine, so I must read, but woe to me the stress o college…… I will return, but first a comment on yer comment on Jerjonji’s website. Concerning socialism: While socialism (unperverted by human greed) is the ideal, and truest form of government, I beleive that it is not possible in this world. As a christian (weather I’ll get shunned for it by ye or no) I beleive that this is the final government that will be in place under God in heaven. But to try and implement this government on earth is impossible, due to the eventual empowerment and manipulation by greedy humanity. (ala U.S.S.R.) So while Capitalism is not the best form of economic system, it uses human’s greed against eachother. This keeps it in balance and in check. This system can only last as long as it is balanced, but when it becomes unbalanced (as it is becoming in these, our, United States) the system will self-destruct.
RYC: Love is a wonderful thing, and I adore romantic comedies. Serendipity is a good film. I just don’t like it when movies reinforce society’s standards for women—not every woman needs a man to rescue her. Of course, I wouldn’t have spent my Sunday any other way. I love Dave a lot. I’m very happy for you and your girlfriend!
What a powerful set of poetry. You are brave to post these so raw and personal. Well done.
On another topic.. I was driving my two kids to school this morning. I drove past a man jogging that looked so much like your profile pic I had to do a double take and remember you are in California. Thought that was kind of interesting.
Nice poetry. Thanks for stopping by my “change” blog and i literally lol when I read your “dear pretty” I blogged about that one time, why when people shorten my name, they use nosy instead of pretty. Thanks!!
Michael,
The reason for the comment ID mixup is that when I commented, the computer was signed in under my son’s Xanga username and I didn’t know it. With my computer down, there are six of us sharing a computer, and all six of us have Xanga blogs. Sorry about that. The Firebender comment was from me. Hope you are enjoying life with your new love. You are a dear man.
GEEZ! Talk about a “for example”…
That time I was signed in under ANOTHER son’s Xanga. You’d think I’d be used to checking the ID by now. Sorry again!
My orphanhood felt like something of a liberation. All depends on the relationships, I’m sure.
hey there! thanks fer the comment and the pirate pic! …unfortunately, that eye patch looked all too real….!? surgery? well, i’m half scandinavian….so that relates me to the vikings, which i suppose is just a ‘bones-throw’ away from being a pirate meself…..tho, the pirate day was new to me, i just felt i needed to participate….it was a hoot, that’s fer sure!
Wow, I like to write poetry but am no where near the talent you are.
I like yoru blog and yoru character, I’m a reader fo Liz and sounds like she’s been having a great time with you. I hope you both have a great time together
Wow, I like to write poetry but am no where near the talent you are.
I like yoru blog and yoru character, I’m a reader fo Liz and sounds like she’s been having a great time with you. I hope you both have a great time together